Shattered
by applestoalways47
Summary: WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR SEASON 3. Timothy ignites his father's anger, and Shelagh receives some distressing news she must share with her husband. How will the Turner family deal with what the Lord has sent them? Rather dark Turnadette with a bit of non-graphic M at the end. First CTM fic. One-shot (unless reviews compel me to continue).


**Greetings, darlings! As I said, this is my first Call the Midwife fic, but I do have a bit of experience in the fanfiction world. I absolutely love CTM and Turnadette (Laura Main is the goddess of the universe), and I felt compelled to write a fic about them. WARNING: This does contain SPOILERS for the new season, so if you're one for delayed gratification (unlike the American internet pirate writing this), DON'T READ THIS! It's a bit of a long one-shot, so settle in with a mug of Horlicks and indulge me by taking a read if you're so inclined. It gets rather angsty and a tad bit dark, with a hint of M at the end, but it's not particularly graphic in my view. Hope you enjoy. Thanks!**

**CUSTOMARY DISCLAIMER: I do not own CTM or anything affiliated with it. It's all Jennifer and Heidi's!**

**Shattered**

Dr. Patrick Turner heard the satisfying click of the lock as he turned the key, sighing in relief at being home again after a dreadfully taxing day. He had been called to assist with a difficult transverse birth, one that could have taken a turn for the worse had it not been for the capable hands of himself and Nurse Miller. Cynthia, a favorite of his wife's, was always a great help in a tight spot.

But where was his wife?

He had grown accustomed to her gentle footsteps following the click of that lock; to the soothing brush of her thumb along his cheekbone and the even more soothing brush of her lips against his. Perhaps she had forgotten something at the market or chosen to share a mug of Horlicks with her colleagues after the antenatal clinic, as it was a Tuesday.

Suddenly he heard Timothy on the stairs, hobbling as energetically as he could manage with his braces on, dressed and ready for his Cubs meeting after dinner.

"Hi, Dad!" he exclaimed, barreling into his father for a hug so strong that he actually walked the man backward a few steps, away from the kitchen door toward which he had been heading.

"Goodness, Tim! And hello to you, too! Good day?" he inquired, a bit out of breath.

"Fine, fine," Timothy replied nervously, his hands fidgeting as his eyes cast a frantic glance toward the kitchen door. This glance did not go unnoticed.

"Anything the matter, son?" he asked, his own eyes wandering to where his son's had briefly flashed.

"No, of course not, Dad," the boy breathed hurriedly. "Just…very excited for Cubs is all. Akela said last week that we'd be starting a very important project tonight. Shelagh and I were trying to think of what it might be this afternoon."

The mention of his wife's name refreshed his earlier curiosity. "That sounds wonderful, Tim. By the way, where is Shelagh?"

"She said she had some errands to run in town. She left about 4:30 but promised she'd be home for supper."

"All right then, should be any minute now," said Patrick, setting his medical bag in its usual place by the door with a smile as the familiar combination of marital bliss and nagging anticipation spread through him at the prospect of having his wife come home to him, and he to her. But what was the dustpan doing next to the umbrella stand? Oh well. No matter.

"Shall I put the kettle on so we can have a cup before dinner?" the doctor offered, walking toward the kitchen.

Timothy's face blanched as he impulsively grabbed his father's arm. "Oh, no, Dad, let me," he stuttered. "You just relax. You've had a long day and—"

"Now, Tim, you know very well you can't quite reach that tap yet," his father interjected, affectionately ruffling his son's hair before walking through the kitchen door.

"Dad—"

And then he heard it.

The distinct sound of something breaking, something being crushed underfoot. He lifted his shoe to find the remnants of a shard of china-blue porcelain crumbled on the tile. He knew that blue.

"No."

He looked up at the windowsill above the sink.

Nothing.

He ran to the counter only to find a faded brown ring where it had once rested.

Helen's favorite vase.

He had bought it for her on their honeymoon. Hadn't even bothered to bargain with the shopkeeper, though he'd only had a pittance in his pocket as a student still training in the medical profession. She'd kept something blooming in it every day of her life; only when she'd fallen ill had its contents withered. He had kept it empty in the many months following her death, but Shelagh had begun putting fresh flowers in it since they had married, knowing its meaning, paying homage of sorts to the woman her husband had once loved—the woman who had brought Timothy into the world.

Patrick traced the ring with his fingers briefly before reaching for the cupboard under the sink, pulling out the wastebasket. Inside laid four yellow tulips on a bed of shattered blue.

He looked up to find his son by the counter, head bowed in shame and tears teetering on his eyelids. His son's gaze rose to meet his.

"I'm so sorry, Da—"

"I don't care how sorry you are!" Patrick yelled, straightening up to tower over the frightened nine-year-ld. "This was your mother's favorite vase! You know what it meant to her, to me! How could you do this?"

"It was an accident," Timothy choked out through his tears. "There was a lovely breeze out…and I thought I'd open the window…but I couldn't quite reach, and—"

"And nothing!" Patrick interrupted. "You thought you could just hide this from me like a coward?"

Timothy winced as if he had been stung. He had only tried to clean up for his father, scared that he would react exactly as he was now. He had heard the car puttering up the driveway and had rushed to finish, letting the damning shard fall on the floor in his haste to dispose of the dustpan downstairs as he ran up to his room. He wanted nothing more than to be up there now, hidden from his shame and from the world.

He turned to leave the kitchen, but his father caught him gruffly by the shoulder.

"You can't just run away from this like it never happened," he gritted through his teeth, his voice lower in volume but laced with venom.

He paused, considering his next move. Timothy attempted to free himself from his father's grasp, but his grip only tightened with the movement.

"You are grounded, young man. I want you to take this wastebasket up to your room with you and think hard about what you've done."

"But Dad, I have Cubs toni—" he began to protest.

"I don't care!" his father roared, shoving the wastebasket into his arms and pointing toward the door. "Now do as you're to—"

He cut himself off as he saw the figure in the doorway. His raised voice had obscured that telltale click of the lock, those gentle footsteps he had grown to love.

"Shelagh," he breathed.

Timothy dropped the wastebasket and ran crying past his stepmother even as she reached for him, pulling his brace-clad legs up the stairs as quickly as he could. Patrick cringed when he heard his son trip. Shelagh moved to help.

"Leave him," he murmured quietly, in a voice he himself did not recognize.

"Patrick," his wife said, her voice low, as unrecognizable as his.

"What, Shelagh?" he asked crassly, his ire returning at the reproachful look she was giving him. "He behaved badly, he needed to be punished."

"But so harshly, Patrick?" she questioned, stepping toward him. "It was only an accident." She paused briefly.

"There are greater things that have been broken."

The heaviness of her statement weighed on them both before he spoke.

"If you mean your vows, Shelagh, there is no comparison here. That was by choice for something beautiful, for us," he intoned passionately, stepping forward to claim her hands in supplication, threading their fingers together in the process. She sighed as their eyes met.

He just as quickly dropped her hands and stepped back as he forced himself to tear his gaze from hers, pointing to the wastebasket.

"_This_ was out of stupidity for something as trivial as a breeze!"

"It was not stupidity, Patrick," Shelagh defended. "It was a little boy trying to be a man. He's been wanting to prove his worth to you by acting older than he is ever since his mother died. Proving that he could reach that window was a way for him to do that. You shouldn't fault him so for that, and you certainly shouldn't have yelled at him so loudly," she said firmly, yet with a degree of tenderness, stepping properly into the light.

Patrick could see now that her face was white as paper, paler than her usual porcelain complexion. Her angelic beauty stayed with her always, enhanced by the golden hair that now flowed freely to frame her face in a heavenly aura, but in that moment her strikingly clear blue-green eyes told of a trying day. Something had gotten to her. Her beauty had disarmed him many times, but he would not let it do so today.

"It was one of the few things I had left of her."

Shelagh raised her hand to cup his cheek as the doorbell rang. Jack had come to walk with Timothy to Cubs.

"I guess we'll have to tell him Tim—"

But his wife was already shouting up to Timothy that it was time for Cubs, ushering him to the door as he wiped his tears and put on a brave face.

"Hold it right there, young man," Patrick said forcefully, punctuating his remark with an accusatory finger.

"Run along then, Timothy," he heard Shelagh urge gently, "You don't want Akela to find you tardy, now, do you?"

Timothy cast one last forlorn look at his father before leaving the house.

"Timothy!"

But the door had already been shut, his wife palming the wood, leaning on it as if she needed the support to keep her whole body from collapsing.

"Shelagh, what the hell was that?" he fumed, walking out of the kitchen to face her.

"Now really, Patrick, that language is uncalled for—" she began, head bowed as she attempted to find her strength.

"I think it's highly called for! My boy needs to respect my authority, and you completely undermined that just now."

"Respect you?" she threw back, straightening up, an unknown fire rising within her. "You bullied him, Patrick! You shamed him utterly for a simple accident! He broke a vase, and you broke his heart."

A heavy silence reigned over the moment.

"You know, Patrick, this is always what worried me about you. I would see you with your son, I would hear the love and pride in your voice as you told me about him. Your love for your son was one of the things that drew me to you, that pushed beneath my habit and into my heart."

Memories clouded her eyes before she refocused.

"But then that one day at the clinic, when Timothy came in with that scrape on his arm and you…you downplayed the severity of his injury when he was hurting, and you became angered with him when the fault lay with his school for letting him leave. Times like those were the only instances when my faith in you wavered, Patrick."

She paused to gather herself.

"I had two faiths then, Patrick, and they were at war with each other. Doubting one of them was painful, but doubting both—"

She swallowed down a sob.

"Doubting both you and God was simply unbearable. Times like that clinic were the things I hung on to while trying to convince myself that I didn't want you, no matter how much it hurt, that what I was feeling was wrong, a sin, because I felt that the way you treated Timothy in those moments was sinful."

"Are you telling me how to raise my child?" he bellowed in outrage.

"I am telling you that Timothy sometimes needs more sensitivity—"

"He's not your son!"

That wince that had flashed across Timothy's face earlier, as if something had stung him, sliced through Shelagh's entire body.

She bristled and nearly screamed, "Well, from what I found out today, he's the closest thing I'll ever get!"

The silence hung like a dull ache in the air, sucking the oxygen from their lungs.

Shelagh leaned on the wall for support, suddenly feeling faint. Patrick moved to help her, but she held out a palm in warning. Oh, how he longed to kiss the scar on that palm, to solve everything with the press of his lips to her skin.

"What do you mean, Shelagh?" he prodded gently.

She gathered herself, trying to grasp the fleeting wisps of words she had run though her mind on the walk home, trying to figure out how to tell him.

"I've…I've still been having my time every month, though we've been trying, so I went to see a specialist today—"

"_I'm_ a specialist, Shelagh," he interrupted, his anger threatening to flare again.

"You're also my husband, Patrick," she shot back. She continued, "I went to a specialist to have some tests done, and—"

She choked on strangled sob.

"And because of the TB scarring, my chances of conceiving are almost…nonexistent."

The heavy silence reigned again. She saw his heart shatter in his eyes.

"Even if, by some miracle…Carrying it to term would be…"

She failed to finish as her knees buckled, and he sprang to catch her, gathering her in his arms as she wept uncontrollably, unleashing the bottled feelings of worry and stress she had kept stored for months. He felt her bite into the shoulder of his jacket and beat her fists against his chest, lashing out at the injustice of it all. He enclosed her delicate hands in his large, weathered palms and pressed a soft kiss to her temple, trying to calm her down.

"Oh, God," she wailed expelling one last sob before snuffling and raising her head to meet his gaze.

"I keep thinking, what if this is a punishment from Him, a sign that I failed my test, that I chose the wrong path? As a nun, I would never have had children, and—"

"Darling, darling," he cooed, placing butterfly kisses on her eyelids, cheeks, forehead, everywhere he could reach.

"When I hold you," he began, crooking a finger beneath her chin. "When I kiss you," he continued, placing his lips to hers. "When I make love to you," he murmured low, and a shiver shot up her spine. "Do you feel as though you've made the wrong choice? That our life together is somehow wrong in the eyes of God?"

She thought for a moment, slowly regaining her composure. He listened with bated breath for her reply.

"No," she answered, and he immediately closed his eyes and sighed in relief.

"Darling, look at me," she pled, and he obeyed. The love he saw in her eyes astounded him.

"When you hold me," she said, her fingers lacing through his, "I feel precious."

He placed a reverent kiss to her fingers as she continued.

"When you kiss me," she breathed, placing a kiss of her own on his lips, resting her forehead against his, "I feel blessed."

Her lips claimed his again and again, fleeting, fluttering kisses filled with passion.

"And when you make love to me," she rasped, her voice laden with love and desire, her nose brushing either side of his, "I feel worshipped, sacred."

Her last word was whispered against his lips before he used them to claim hers, dropping her hands to clutch her back and cling to her fully as her fingers wove into his hair. They drank their lifeblood from each other's lips as he gathered her into his arms and carried her to their bed.

They stripped each other reverently, symbolic not just of their deep love and respect for one another but also of the rawness of their souls, stripped bare by shattered hopes. His hands and lips were everywhere as she writhed beneath him, and he pressed firmer, sucked harder with every gasp and strangled "Oh, yes," trying to make her forget, if only for a little while.

It was frantic, wanton, almost akin to a tryst, but there was holy love being made by two people desperately clinging to each other in an unforgiving world. He set a steady rhythm, whispering "sacred, blessed, loved, precious;" a word for every stroke.

They fell over the edge together, falling and soaring simultaneously, a blaze of blissful pain and pleasure and love so pure it felt as though they'd caught a glimpse of heaven.

He moved to lay beside her, but her fingers dug into his back as she begged, "Stay," in a ragged voice filled with longing. He cocooned her in the warmth of his body as he intertwined their hands and brought them to rest over each of their hearts, brushing his lips over her skin. He soothed the places where he'd marked her neck in his fervent passion. She responded in kind, feathering kisses across his chest, letting her tongue trace the shell of his ear, ghosting her lips over his temple.

Their eyes met, and he knew to shift off of her, keeping her enveloped in his embrace as he pulled the blankets up around them, a momentary shelter from their demons, personal and mutual.

"Darling," he murmured softly.

"Yes, Patrick," she replied.

"No matter what happens, Timothy is _our_ son."

Her breath hitched at his words.

"And we'll raise him together. I love you both so much, and we are a family."

Tears clouded her vision as she ran that soothing thumb along his cheekbone and blessed his lips with a kiss.

"And I love you, Patrick, and Timothy. This family is my whole life now. I once thought that nursing was my true calling, but it was only a whisper leading me here. This, being with here with you both, is my real purpose."

**Hope you enjoyed it! Melodrama just sets my little fangirl heart ablaze. I love reviews almost as much as I love watching Laura and Stephen make goo-goo eyes at each other (sorry, Heidi!). Love to all my Nonnatuns! **


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